Summary

Since the formation of nation-states lawyers, philosophers, and theologians have sought to envisage the ideal political order. Their concepts, deeply entangled with ideas of theology, state formation, and human nature, form the bedrock of today's theoretical discourses on international law. This volume maps models of early international legal thought from Machiavelli to Hegel before international law became an academic discipline. The interplay of system and order serves as a leitmotiv throughout the book, helping to link historical models to contemporary discourse. Part I covers a diverse collection of thinkers in order to scrutinize and contextualize their respective models of the international realm in light of general legal and political philosophy. Part II maps the historical development of international legal thought more generally by distilling common themes and ideas that have remained at the forefront of debate, such as the relationship between law and theology, the role of the individual versus that of the state, and the influence of power and economic interests on the law. In the current political climate, where it is common to state that the importance of the nation-state is vanishing, the problems at issue in the classic theories do not seem so remote: is an international system without central power possible? How can a normative order come about if there is no central force to order relations between states? These essays show how uncovering the history of international law can offer ways in which to envisage its future --Front flap of cover.

Notes

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction / Stefan Kadelbach, Thomas Kleinlein, and David Roth-Isigkeit -- Niccolò Machiavelli's international legal thought : culture, contingency, and construction / David Roth-Isigkeit -- Francisco de Vitoria : a redesign of global order on the threshold of Middle Ages to modern times / Kirstin Bunge -- Francisco Suárez S.J. on the end of peaceful order among states and systematic doctrinal scholarship / Tobias Schaffner -- Jean Bodin on international law / Merio Scattola -- Alberico Gentili : sovereignity, natural law, and the system of Roman civil law / Andreas Wagner -- Althusius : back to the future / Thomas O. Hueglin -- Hugo Grotius : on the conquest of utopia by systematic reasoning / Stefan Kadelbach -- Orders in disorder : the question of an international state of nature in Hobbes and Rousseau / Jonas Heller -- The international legal argument in Spinoza / Tilmann Altwicker -- States, as ethico-political subjects of international law : the relationship between theory and practice in the international politics of Samuel Pufendorf / Vanda Fiorillo -- Christian Wolff : system as an episdoe? / Thomas Kleinlein -- The law of the nations as the civil law of the world : on Montesquieu's political cosmopolitanism / Christian Volk -- Emer de Vattel on the society of nations and the political system of Europe / Simone Zurbuchen -- Towards a system of sympathetic law : envisioning Adam Smith's theory of jurisprudence / Bastian Ronge -- Systematicity to excess : Kant's conception of the international legal order / Benedict Vischer -- Fichte and the echo of his internationalist thinking in Romanticism / Carla De Pascale -- The plurality of states and the world order of reason : on Hegel's understanding of international law and relations / Sergio Dellavalle -- What should international legal history become? / Martti Koskenniemi -- State theory, state order, state system : jus gentium and the constitution of public power / Nehal Bhuta -- Spatial perceptions, judicial practices, and early international legal thought around 1500 : from Tordesillas to Saragossa / Thomas Duve -- The discovery of economy? : the first Relectio de indis in a theological perspective / Mónica García-Salmones Rovira -- Power and law as ordering devices in the system of international relations / Gunther Hellmann -- Universalism and particularism : a dichotomy to read theories on international order / Armin von Bogdandy and Sergio Dellavalle -- Some brief conclusions / Pierre-Marie Dupuy